alt Hacker NewsI've seen soooo many rendering errors in Safari. And bugged-out keyboard + inputs (input touch location offset from its visible location on the page after the keyboard opens—a real problem if you're trying to paste). Never ever seen it 1/10 this buggy after any prior release, and I've been on iOS since... 5, I think? And did some development work on the platform as early as version 3 or 4.
That's in addition to so many dropped frames in the animations that I disabled as many as I could because it was driving me crazy, and to a bunch of word-based buttons becoming confusing icons. I think this has topped 7 for my least-favorite iOS release, and the gap widens by the day. It's terrible.
[EDIT] What it most reminds me of (I was on early Android and have done even more development work on Android over the years than I have for iOS) is Android. The jank, the pile of little confusing UI choices that all add up into an overall off-putting experience. The uncertainty what kind of bad thing might happen when you touch anything. Feels like an above-average 3rd party Android skin, like from Samsung or someone (so, pretty bad). The stuttering animations. No other iOS release has ever felt like Android to me.
Normally I tend to wait before each major release, but I got lured by unknown caller screening. Then I noticed there's no unknown caller screening for me (just a useless setting to move unknown callers to a different list). They also removed blocking numbers directly from the recents list and the new phone layout is a complete mess.
For me it's been going downhill since the update that changed the settings app to show apps (even system ones) on a different page. Iwas seriosuly inpressed with the settings app when I first switched to Apple from Android, and now it's terrible.
Meanwhile you still can't freely set the search wngkne for Safari, contacts always forgets my custom labels, camera doesn't allow free control over the flashlight,...
P.S. Typos due to iOS26